


Radicular Pain

by dorothy_notgale



Series: The More Loving One (Beyond Beyond Re-Animator) [4]
Category: Beyond Re-Animator (2003), Bride of Re-Animator (1989), Re-Animator (1985)
Genre: Closet Sex, Cuddling, Dehumanization, First Times, M/M, Not literally, POV Alternating, Pre-prison, The Epic Betrayal, Unintentional Cruelty, Unsafe Sex, poor communication kills, relationship, surprisingly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 14:51:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5052943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Last times and first times for Dan and Herbert, before the conviction. Kissing, sharing beds, and sex; how they ended and how they started. They say you should begin as you mean to go on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Radicular Pain

_Kiss –_ _March_ _1990  
_ _Dan_

They arrive at the courthouse separately: Dan on his own recognizance, Herbert in the custody of Massachusetts' finest. Each is accompanied by his own counsel, a thing to which Herbert had agreed with a remarkable lack of curiosity.

The first direct sight of Herbert in weeks is a let-down, in that the fascination still lingers. Dan had been hoping separation would change that. Instead it's gotten worse; Herbert's shirt and tie are new, and the warm blush and moss tones bring out the hazel in his eyes _._ _Clearly his lawyer wanted him to look less like_ _a carrion-crow_. His cuffs are buttoned, his pressed jacket draped over one arm. He's the picture of reason. But those eyes... they're darting, energized as when he works, and hold the underlying panic of an animal that senses a trap. When his gaze fixes on Dan, though, all that is subsumed by some hideous imitation of affection.

He steps forward and Dan tenses, vaguely convinced that he's been discovered and is thus about to die. Instead, he's pulled into a weirdly public _hug._

“Don't worry,” Herbert whispers, voice silken soft. “They know nothing. We'll be fine.”

For Herbert to still believe that... God, he _is_ a madman, brimful of an arrogance so immense as to parody naivete. Looking at the rabid creature he is about to put down, Dan's gripped by a perverse blend of pity and desire. What harm, to give in when this life as he knows it is over?

He closes his eyes to block out the courtroom and ducks his head, bestowing a final near-chaste kiss on the honeyed mouth that tempted him into so many terrible acts. Herbert's lips part immediately, and as tongues meet Dan hears or feels a small, choked vocalization enter him.

Someone outside of them gasps; he ignores it, busy giving the Devil his due this one last time. It won't matter soon anyway.

When he pulls back, Herbert's face betrays apparently genuine surprise, wary once more even while licking up every trace of the declaration.

“Why did you do that, Dan?”

There's no good answer; fortunately, that 's when the judge enters. Herbert reaches out, links their hands under the table, and Dan hasn't the heart to let go. The bailiff's droning commands lead them all through the ritual dance of rises and seatings, and then.

And then.

“I understand that the State's Attorney has arrived at a plea agreement with one of the defendants—”

“Daniel, what have you done?” Herbert's nails cut into his palm; Dan wrenches away like the coward he is, hand and mouth both cold at the perfectly expected revelation of his perfidy.

“Let the record show—”

“What have you done to us, you _utter idiot_ _‽”_

This time, when Herbert bares his fangs and lunges, Dan's _certain_ there's murder on his mind.

 

~*~*~*~

 

_Sharing A Bed – September 1989  
Herbert_

Herbert sprawls in bed, tired and relaxed and nude, legs tangled in blankets and head buried under pillows. He has been here since his shift ended at four. He isn't sleeping. Sometimes, he just needs to lie down, for a few minutes or hours—or, what bliss, imagine _days_ —to close his eyes and cover himself and breathe. His mind races yet, firing and burning.

Mental exhaustion causes mistakes.

It doesn't occur to him that _this_ is a mistake until Dan tells him so.

Dan arrives home, pauses at the bedroom door, enters. Herbert listens to his object of desire disrobing and redressing; Dan sleeps in pajama bottoms. Inconvenient, but important to his comfort. The bed shifts as he climbs in and opens his paperback, and Herbert takes that as the cue to roll and curl against his hip.

Dan looks down in vague surprise at the head now pillowed on his thigh; he must not have been aware Herbert was awake. He swallows, larynx bobbing. Herbert decides that he will lick that throat later, taste the day's salt.

“Herbert.”

“Dan.” He closes his eyes, calm now.

He sleeps.

The next morning, over a rare same-day-off breakfast of pancakes for Dan and coffee and cornflakes for Herbert, Dan corrects him.

“You know I don't mind.” _He_ _rbert_ _has learned that as far a_ _s_ _opening statement_ _s go, that one_ _is invariably a polite lie._ “But if you could just… try to clear the books off your bed? So we don't have to share as often?”

It takes a moment for the meaning (and the faulty assumptions his partner's made) to filter through Herbert's sleep-fogged brain, but he gets there in the end.

“Of course, Dan,” Dan needs things to be a certain way; Herbert needs Dan. The logic is as simple as it is undeniable. “So sorry to have troubled you.”

“Thanks. I've got a date Friday, and…” Dan shrugs in that schoolboyish combination of pride and shyness he's never lost when talking about women who may possibly allow him near their genitals.

Herbert spends the rest of the day rearranging the bookshelves in what he'd believed to be the spare bedroom of their latest residence, making plenty of reassuring noise while he's at it. The shipment of antique alchemical diaries should have been unpacked long ago. Physical anatomy is taking up more space than it used to, and organic chemistry needs to be double-stacked (and weeded, truthfully—when's the last time he actually consulted _Wöhler?_ ). He's let it overflow onto the desk again. Dan never uses this room, anyway, so his preferred organization systems don't matter.

By nightfall, he's got the space the way he likes it.

When Dan goes to fetch Chinese, Herbert takes in a sheet set, three extra blankets, two pillows, and a hot water bottle from the linen closet; up until now, the bed had been just as bare of them as it had of books.

Dan _never_ uses this room.

 

~*~*~*~

 

_Fucking – February 1990  
Dan_

Hospital broom closets are not an inherently sexy environment, though Dan Cain's esteem for them has certainly been raised somewhat by the number of orgasms he's had therein.

His partner pounces an instant after jamming the door, palming Dan's cock through his pants while rutting against him from behind.

“I thought you wanted to talk,” he manages, but Christ, it's Pavlovian—he's rutting right back. He knows he'll hear a smirk in Herbert's voice if he gets an answer at all.

“I do, but you'll listen better if you aren't distracted.” Sure enough, there's all the smug satisfaction of a Persian cat shedding on a millionaire's cushions.

“Feels like you're the one who got distracted.”

“You musn't blame me.” If his voice drips any more insincerity, they'll actually need the mop and bucket. “How was I to resist, when you were being so obvious?”

“I'm not—”

“Darling,” _cruel_ _taunting_ _shouldn't_ _give this kind of thrill_ , “your patient's sister is very attractive, and everyone on this floor knows you think so.”

Iris _is_ attractive—not just beautiful, but sweet and affectionate. She takes good care of her sick brother. Definite girlfriend material. And she'd asked if he was single, with a flirtatious little smile that said she'd be fun to spend time with. Dan's never eaten vegetarian before.

He pushes back, hunching a bit to better feel Herbert swelling against him. God, how had he _known_? How attuned is he to Dan's every twist of arousal?

It's not normal, but he finds he doesn't really care as Herbert squeezes past and pulls him by the lapels towards the mounted shelves. For someone so fiercely opposed to limitations, he's surprisingly fond of having Dan fuck him up against walls, in corners, anything that cages his body and gives him leverage.

He expects Herbert to go down to the concrete floor, to suck and smile in the knowledge that The Upstanding Dr. Cain is not above this closet degradation. For Uptight Dr. West to work through the day with his knees coated in fine grey dust only Dan would look close enough notice would be—but instead, he simply takes a spraddle-legged seat on a stack of milk crates and reaches his witchy little hand into Dan's fly. Dan braces himself flat-palmed on tile, arms boxing his partner up in a mockery of embrace.

He's so lovely, sometimes. Sometimes the mask is so perfect, so almost human, that Dan can't help but allow himself to be deceived. Like now. Having an illicit teenage-grade makeout session for no reason in particular, he just has to lean down and kiss his keeper.

Herbert _h_ _mm_ _ms_ softly and lets his lashes fall in lazy satisfaction. Dan sprinkles delicate pecks all over: cheeks, ears, as low on his neck as starched collar permits, forehead, eyebrows, the tip of that pert nose. Meanwhile, clever fingers work him in a fast, rippling motion learned through practice—four years, nearly. He bites down on a white-coated shoulder when it overwhelms him.

Impeccably prepared, Herbert catches the mess in a paper towel and slides forward to straddle Dan's bent leg. He's sweating a little, high forehead glistening as he rocks against thigh muscle.

Jesus, he's... he looks good. Really, really good, with pupils dilated and mouth open. He _feels_ good, hard and wiry and needy. Dan reaches down and cups his tight ass in both hands, urging him on.

He's on the verge, clutching wrinkles into Dan's shirt and biting his lip against sound, when

“ _DR. WEST! PAGING DR. WEST! DR. WEST TO PATHOLOGY!”_

he freezes, face blank but hair ruffled, and then dismounts without a word. His white coat will cover his erection for the few minutes until it's safely willed away. He can turn it off so easily, it's a wonder that Dan's ever been fooled.

It's not until he's halfway out the door that Dan thinks to ask: “What did you want to talk about?”

“Hmm?” If Herbert blinks a touch slower than usual, if his expression seems a tad fixed, well, even he's not totally immune to hormones. “Oh, it doesn't matter. I'll tell you this evening, after you get off.”

As it happens, Dan never does find out; that's the night Herbert's monsters finally get them arrested.

 

~*~*~*~

 

_Mouth to Mouth_ _–_ _September_ _1985  
_ _Herbert_

Herbert wakes to the sound of Daniel weeping. The fact that he wakes at all is something of a surprise; Dan's presence, weeping or not, is enough of a bonus to make him near giddy. _(That's the shock talking.)_

It's rather a pity about Meg. He knows intimately what she experienced, and it's not good.

If asked, Herbert would have to describe death as black, solely for lack of adequate conceptual vocabulary to convey anything more or less. He doesn't know whether it's a memory or whether his brain is trying to compensate for the state after the fact, but either way—as he'd always suspected, the _absence_ is the worst thing he has ever encountered. This may be why he feels the thing that brings him back is so loaded with significance.

A mouth, pressed to his own (no masks, not then—in all the chaos), hands violently massaging his chest where suffocating entrails had been at last recollection. The return of air is linked inextricably to the crush of Dan's body against his own.

Life, and awakening thereto, _is_ hurtful. His mind reels, oversensitive from the onslaught of sweat smell, rancid bile, harsh hospital lighting, alarms screaming shouting _live, dammit, live, not you too_ pain pleasure _please_ after blank insensate negation. He has always known these truths by instinct; this is merely confirmation. Still, the exquisite agony he felt when his friend pulled him back into flesh-and-blood leaves its mark seared somewhere inside. He is newly vibrant, and Dan's touch is more necessary than before.

If God existed, Herbert would thank it for the fact that said touch hasn't yet been withdrawn. Dan, shocky and hollow, sits beside him on a gurney. He leaves his blood-sticky bare arm slung around Herbert's shoulders. Herbert doesn't complain about the weighty pressure of the limb on his injuries, so long as he can keep feeling it. It's life.

More than that, his conviction in his work is affirmed. He refuses to die again. He refuses to let Dan die.

He refuses to lose life now that he's found it.

 

~*~*~*~

 

_Sleeping Together – October 1986  
Dan_

Dan emerges from delirium to a sensation he hasn't felt in forever: a head heavy on his shoulder. Considering the head in question, he spends a good few minutes thinking he's still seeing unreality.

Herbert's hair is tousled and greasy, sticking out at odd angles over his sallow unshaven face. Some people look younger with their glasses off or when they're sleeping. He looks older, simply because he is so obviously buckling under the weight of fatigue. Furrows craze his brow as though carved.

The rest of his slight figure is curled into a desk chair at the side of the motel bed, one leg tucked, back and shoulders hunching forward in a painful kink-inducing pose. He's emitting a series of soft not-quite-snores and his fingers occasionally twitch against Dan's side.

It's bizarre and out of place, a puma on a playground. So of course Dan does what everyone does when a wild thing unexpectedly plays tame: He holds his breath so as not to spook it.

Herbert is no puma. He jerks awake instantly, right hand flying to the pulse point at Dan's throat and left thrust into his bag as though he's never stopped work. Some inaudible mutterings fall from pursed lips, and his sleep-crusted eyes rivet to the bedside clock.

He jumps when Dan weakly grabs his wrist; a syringe of clear liquid clatters to the floor.

“Danny!” The guilty surprise in his eyes makes Dan's gut clench. “You're… you're all right.”

“Why wouldn't I be?” A sudden electric pain in his belly reminds him when he tries to sit up.

“The injury… It was close.” Herbert presses his shoulders down with a startling burst of strength. “I was. There was a risk that you might stop breathing.”

“I don't remember.”

“No,” he says as gently as his complete lack of bedside manner allows. “You wouldn't; you were asleep through most of it.”

Dan’s mind holds only snatches of memory and dream, battlefields, basements, motels and morgues melding into a funhouse horrorscape.

“And you?” Most absurd, he has an echo of a hallucination of hands stroking warm water through his overlong hair while a high, near-panicked voice issued garbled reassurances.

“I… tried to stay awake, but without using the re-agent… I needed to monitor your breathing. This,” (He gestures into the space between them)“seemed the safest way.”

Dan doesn't care to examine exactly _why_ Herbert is so invested in knowing the instant he stops breathing. It's not as though he'd ever purposefully hasten Dan's death—but should a particularly fresh specimen cross his path in this form, Herbert's not the sort who'd let sentiment stay his hand, either. Still...

His partner's shivering, Dan notices abstractly. Whether it's from exhaustion or from his natural low body temperature, either way, sleeping in a rickety chair with no blankets can't be helping. And he'd stayed off the re-agent the whole time, even without Dan's direct supervision; the bruise-black of his eye sockets can't possibly be fake.

Somewhere in that icy, exacting brain, some switch had flipped that made him comply ever-so-slightly with Dan's wishes, show him some tiny consideration greater than that afforded to the rest of the human race.

Dan sighs and nods at the other yellowing pillow. “Share.” His tongue is thick, exhaustion pulling him down again.

“What?” The sheer degree of confusion on that face affirms just how badly lack of rest can affect the brain.

“You need sleep, and you need to monitor me. This'll be easier than trying to balance on that chair.”

“You're certain?” Herbert's question seems a matter of form—he's already begun uncurling from the chair, half-crawling onto the mattress. “I don't want to put pressure on the incision—”

“Just get in. If you make yourself sick, we'll both be flat on our backs and helpless.”

Doctor West goes out like a light, but his wakeful patient can't stop staring at the ceiling until the grey of dawn creeps across the window ledge.

 

~*~*~*~

 

_Coitus – June 1986  
Herbert_

Herbert likes looking at Dan, down here. The heat means far more opportunities to see him with his shirt off, to examine his musculature and marvel at its smooth coordination. His build is ideal; Herbert can produce detailed arguments as to why. When he sweats he's thrown into shining relief, and smells oddly delicious in a gamy, living, animal way.

And Herbert's fairly certain that he's seen Dan looking back. Not consistently, nor with deliberate intent, but… considering. There's a raw desire to him, probably originating from celibacy but equally probably possible to direct once present.

Herbert can work with that, he thinks.

He hopes.

He starts small—taking minor liberties with space and possessions, insinuating himself bodily into Dan's orbit. He finds illicit thrill in leaning under the taller man's arm to examine a specimen, using his comb, drinking thirstily from the same canteen and allowing a few drops to trickle down his chin.

Dan notices, and does not ask that he stop the behaviors. He instead begins moving closer, anticipating Herbert's needs and working hand-in-glove as he's fondly imagined an assistant doing. They operate in tandem, seamless and easy. This side effect of the increased physical intimacy is both unexpected and beneficial.

Yet for all his planning, the final broach of the subject isn't even intentional.

Things comes to a head one night shortly after Herbert acquires his firearm. Dan doesn't like it—says that as doctors, they've no business with tools of killing—but Dan isn't the one who stays close to record their findings. Dan isn't the one who has to make illicit drug runs through the jungle.

 _Dan_ will just have to cope.

But it's while Herbert is oiling the piece that he notices his partner's unusual stillness, his slightly shallower respiration. His lack of conversation, when normally he fills the silence with everything from inventory lists to baseball scores. Dan's eyes are following Herbert's hands as they drag a rag along the barrel of the weapon.

It's broken down and therefore harmless, but even so he at first assumes that it's the symbol of their enemy Death that's bothering Dan again. Then he meets Dan's dilated gaze while drawing the barrel vertical, and all becomes clear.

It _is_ a symbol that has Dan distracted—a phallic one. His friend is aroused, and that need has centered on Herbert.

_Finally._

“Problem?”

“Nothing. Just reading.” Dan flushes and looks away, busying himself with the large book in his lap—the not-large-enough book. His seat at the edge of a low cot makes his thighs practically a display bracket for what's happening in his fatigues.

“You don't have to lie, Dan. It's perfectly natural.” Herbert smiles, just slightly, and blatantly eyes his dear friend's erection.

“And you don't have to ask, _Herbert_ ,” Dan snipes back; his penis visibly twitches even as his knees snap together. “That'd be perfectly _normal_.”

(As though normalcy is a state to which to aspire. Honestly, sometimes Herbert despairs.)

“How long has it been?” he asks, setting the stripped weapon aside.

“Shut up.”

“Really, how long? Excluding masturba—”

“How _dare_ you‽”

Frustration, months of it, makes him blunt, and he plays a card he's never intended: “Four days before she died.”

Dan's face registers horrified confirmation and mounting rage. Herbert scrambles to recover the lost ground.

“I heard you. It wasn't planned, a migraine kept me from classes—” and oh, there's a lie, a lie they both know. Herbert's utterly predictable 'migraines' went the way of his solution, in a weeklong blackout characterized primarily in snatches of blinding pain and mewling gratitude. He moves hastily along. “—I'm just saying. She… loved you. I'm told that love makes people want the best for others.”

“You're told.” Ah, emotional mocking; Dan does enjoy his little vanities.

“I wouldn't know from experience,” he grants. “But surely you needn't cause yourself discomfort in her memory.”

“There's not much alternative in this hellhole, is there?” And there's blame, as though Dan hadn't booked their flight. _(Admittedly at Herbert's behest.)_

“You do have _one_ option,” he says with attempted casualness. Dan stares, blinking in incomprehension, until Herbert moves as fluidly as he can to crouch before him. He'd prefer to assume a superior position, but standing would likely prove too much of a challenge to tender 'heterosexual' sensibilities to risk just yet. Instead, he places one hand on each of Dan's knees and forcibly spreads them in an advance so clear even this straight-and-narrow boy can't ignore it.

“You're kidding.” His beautiful—yes, let it be thought, if not said—assistant lets out a breathy laugh appealingly tinged with fright. This close, there is a brown smudge of dirt or blood visible on his left cheek.

“Not at all,” Herbert smiles a little wider, tries to make himself inviting. “I'm available to you.”

“ _Available_.” Based on the tone of the repetition there is some implication here, some subtlety, that displeases Dan, but Herbert hasn't minutes to waste parsing it. He forges onward.

“You seem interested, if not enraptured, and it would solve your frustration. I realize that the anatomy is somewhat different from your preference, but…” he shrugs, looking over the frames of his glasses. “Of course, if you've an aversion...”

“Goddammit, Herbert.” Herbert's embarrassed to be taken off guard when his shoulders are seized with implacable near-violent force. Apparently Dan has taken the proposal in absolute and immediate earnest.

His friend's body is hot—not unpleasantly so. His metabolism keeps him so much warmer, giving off heat like a furnace through their cotton knit shirts. Herbert's tried to subtly bask in it in the past, on cold nights or after bad scares. To have permission now... he shudders a little and cleaves forward, into that fabulous form.

A mouth on his own, a thick tongue shoving in. He unclenches his jaw to allow the rough-smooth mass past his sentry teeth. Dan tastes like everything else in this place: rations, rice, mud, sour with an underlying tang of blood. Herbert lets out an undignified sound and wills himself to move.

Touching his partner is wonderful, but _being_ touched is ecstasy, a slow sweet build—a fix taking hold, temporally hyperattenuated. It feels as though Dan's big hands are everywhere. Even when not making any particular effort, the man's inbuilt fondness for the sensual aspects of this act guarantees that his pleasure-taking is reciprocal. After a few minutes, however, their kiss ends and Dan pushes Herbert back onto his heels, a look of Labradoresque apprehension in those dark circled eyes.

“You haven't done this before, have you?”

He had been unsure whether he should bring that up; Dan didn't seem the sort to fetishize a partner's inexperience and thus consider it a plus, but he might very well find it a negative trait despite the reduced disease risks.

Herbert having already done something to make it obvious bodes ill, but he purses his lips and soldiers on.

“The fact that sex isn't something I've chosen in the past doesn't mean it's not... wanted now.” He walks his fingers back up Dan's thighs, playing with the pockets of the fatigues before dipping into the no-man's-land between thick leather belt and rucked-up tee shirt where he can skim sweaty skin. “I'm a fast learner.”

Some strange series of expressions crosses the face above him; desire, irritation, shame, others he has neither names nor time for. Finally, _finally_ , yet another decision is reached.

“I'm sure you are,” Daniel growls.

And that's that—Herbert is taken first at his word, and then roughly-but-enjoyably on a creaking cot.

What more could he possibly hope for?

 


End file.
